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Southern California Monitoring Association
A group of volunteers is watching closely for suspicious behavior and reminding the public about the high fire danger along roadsides in Orange County near wilderness areas and parks. “Most of the county’s major wildfires have started from a roadside, whether by accident or intentional, and were caused by people,” said Dave Raetz, who heads up the Fire Watch…
The Federal Communications Commission has fined a Readington, New Jersey man nearly $32,000 after concluding he interfered with Newark Liberty International Airport’s satellite-based tracking system when he used an illegal GPS jamming device in his pickup truck to hide his whereabouts from his employer. Disrupting satellite signals can hinder air traffic controllers’ ability to receive…
Posts on the SoCalScan Yahoo Group indicate that the City of Bell Police Department is now dispatching on 155.955 MHz with a PL of 107.2. Apparently, this frequency replaces their old dispatch frequency (155.190 MHz) and represents a “frequency swap” between the cities of Bell and Pasadena that was agreed to last September. BELL POLICE…
What’s in a name? Maybe not so much. In the hundred-year history of emergency management and response in California, the state government organization that coordinates and supports those activities has been known by many titles: The State Council of Defense, The State Emergency Council, The California Disaster Council and Office of Civil Defense, and even…
Long an overnight AM radio fixture on “Coast to Coast AM,” Art Bell, W6OBB, will return to the air with a new show via SiriusXM satellite radio. The topics he’ll explore on “Art Bell’s Dark Matter” will be largely the same, however — the paranormal and unexplained, such as UFOs and alien visitors, weird science…
As a young EMT on a Jerusalem ambulance, Eli Beer realized that, stuck in brutal urban traffic, they often arrived too late to help. So he organized a group of volunteer EMTs — many on foot — ready to drop everything and dash to save lives in their neighborhood. Today, United Hatzlah uses a smartphone…
Authorities suspect that vandals late on July 28 or early on July 29 cut several guy wires supporting the Rocky Ridge radio tower in the hills of the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness above San Ramon and Danville, causing the 200 foot structure to topple. “The Rocky Ridge Tower has been a key communications tower for…
One of Elizabeth Hernandez’s seven computer monitors contains a motto that gets her through the day during her up-to-18-hour shifts as a Ventura County sheriff’s dispatcher: “Keep calm and dispatch on.” With the revamping of the sheriff’s communications center, which includes ergonomic chairs and rising desks, that’s become easier. “There’s definitely a lot more of…
“It’s time for us to retire,” begins the announcement that Monitoring Times magazine will cease publication at year’s end after 33 years. “We will publish through the December 2013 issue,” publisher Bob Grove, W8JHD, told ARRL. “The decision wasn’t an easy one, but economics played a greater part than personal. Judy and I are in…
